The Road to Trump’s Face-off with Iran (The New Arab)

I was flying over the Strait of Hormuz when I first learned Iran had downed a US drone just 12 hours earlier. My Emirates Airlines 777 was on the final approach to Dubai and I had turned on the BBC World live feed to catch up on the news after the 14-hour flight from Seattle.

The first thing that came to mind was the inevitability of the military clash. The second thing was the ironic timing. At that moment, my new book, America & Islam: Soundbites, Suicide Bombs and the Road to Donald Trump, was arriving in bookstores.

And no, the fact that I was in roughly the same airspace where the clash occurred did not escape my notice.

But then almost 40 years of covering the Middle East has taught me that it’s not hard to find yourself at the intersection of misguided American policies and the region’s endless turmoil.